In Juliette, Georgia, Southern Company operates a coal-fired power plant that is the single largest source of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. In Kemper County, Mississippi, the same company is pioneering a technology that many experts believe will be crucial to preventing a climate disaster: It's building the world's first new power plant designed to capture and store most of its carbon.

Carbon capture and storage, or CCS, has been hailed for decades by some as an essential solution to the climate problem, and pilloried by others as unworkable and a dangerous distraction. This year, at last, it will be tested at full commercial scale. (See related, “Can Coal Ever Be Clean?” and photo gallery, “The Visible Impacts.”)

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